1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to load balance in a wireless local area network (LAN) and, more particularly, to a system and a method for balancing load among access points in a wireless LAN.
2. Description of Related Art
Wireless communication has known a rapid, spectacular development leading to an increasing popularity of wireless LAN. FIG. 1 presents schematically a well-known wireless LAN structure. As shown in the FIG. 1, the wireless LAN is comprised of a plurality of mobile stations (e.g., Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)) 13 and access points 10, 11, in which the provision of the additional access point 11 is for serving increased users coupled to the wireless LAN. The access points 10 and, 11 form a group for servicing the mobile stations 13 in the controlled area of the access points 10 and 11. Also, an Ethernet 12 is interconnected the access points 10 and 11. The Ethernet 12 may be further coupled to the Internet to form a wide area network (WAN). As such, for example, one mobile station 13 associated with the access point 10 not only may communicate with the other mobile station over the wireless LAN but also may be coupled to the Internet at any time.
However, load may be out of balance among access points due to roaming or other factors. For example, if three mobile stations 13 are coupled to the access point 10 while only one mobile station 13 is coupled to the access point 11, a new mobile station 13 coupled to the access point 10 may increase the load borne on the access point 10, thus causing an out of balance condition between these two access points 10 and 11. Such out of balance condition can lower the overall performance of the wireless LAN.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide novel system and method for balancing load among access points in a wireless LAN in order to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problem.